Craft

Each year birds fell from the flock
until the migrations could be counted
in bird bones across lake beds. Each year
the traps became rusted with blood
while the mycelium moved mushrooms west,
and west, and west, until they could no longer be found.
Each year the elk rutted in the face of rising coyote populations,
which swelled at gun point, because some of us like to act out
procreation in the face of mortality. Each year I push my bed to the edge
of the lake till the water lifts the mattress, the dazzling launch
of quilts and pillows across the shallows of algae. Drifting,
I try to stay asleep. Drifting, I try to suspend the inevitable
wetting, the sinking, the fact that I am no boat maker.